Death to Fluff Information

"I was given an $850k quota for the year in my northeast territory when the 3 national reps last year produced $700k combined." "The company every year fires the bottom 3rd of the sales team without fail. The longest tenured person on the team has been here 3 years, everyone else has been here 1.5 years or less." "I was moved to a new product line. I was given a new comp plan that was signed off by the VP of Sales. I hit +300% quota in the first month, equivalent to a $15k commission check. The company only paid me $7k and withheld $8k. They told me they made a mistake and gave me a new, much higher quota. They said I can get my remaining $8k if I sign the new comp plan and hit the new quota in month 2." Real stories from different sales people. Some are very experienced, some are just starting off, but all of them went through something that wasn't their fault but became their problem. If they leave, they get labelled job hoppers. If they don't hit quota, then clearly they're not good enough. And if they refuse, they get fired. Feels like a no-win game. "When I brought it up to management, they said: You are definitely not going to hit quota with that attitude. Maybe you need to work harder, really hit the ground running." Nah.... The way sales teams are run today causes mental health issues. 1️⃣ Sales teams are incentivized almost exclusively by money, flying right in the face of modern psychology that proves money is not an intrinsic motivator. 2️⃣ Sales is built on reseting the scoreboard, even though studies have shown constantly starting from scratch has adverse effects on attitude. 3️⃣ Sales is measured purely on revenue outputs, rewarding only the destination and not the journey. I'd rather have a seller that shares competitive intel with the team and slightly misses quota than a seller who hoards tribal knowledge and succeeds only as an individual. 4️⃣ Sales often times glorifies grinding and hustle, which leads to burn out, fatigue, and lower quality work. Efficiency metrics are rarely celebrated. 5️⃣ Sales promotions are often based solely on quota attainment and not actual managerial skills, which disregards several multi-year studies on how high performing, world class teams are built. 6️⃣ Sales culture is often built on outcomes and winning, instead of moral values like integrity, empathy, kindness, etc. It rewards performance over trust, which violates the research on world class teams. Why is sales disregarding fundamental psychology?